After 20 years as a hot air balloon pilot in Waikato, retired dairy farmer Gail Dryland says she’ll “carry on” flying as long as possible.
Dryland was one of more than 20 pilots at the annual Balloons over Waikato festival in Hamilton this week, flying her 6-year-old multicoloured balloon named Lollipop.
She loves being up in the sky and feeling free, “putting on my black gloves and waving down like a queen”, but also feeling how peaceful and therapeutic it is from above.
She’s been flying at the festival for more than a decade. Reflecting on her 20-year piloting journey with the Waikato Herald, she remembers how she “never wanted to be a pilot or own a balloon”.
“The balloons flew over my farm one day and that’s how I first saw them. They landed down the back of the farm, I went over and talked to them, volunteered at the club, and it just snowballed,” she said.
